How Broadway Talent Shapes Tucson Theater Matt August, ATC

🎭 Meet Matt August of Arizona Theatre Company
Tom Heath sits down with Matt August, the Kasser Family Artistic Director of Arizona Theatre Company, to talk about his national theater career and his role leading Arizona’s official state theater.

🌵 Why Tucson Is the Heart of ATC
Matt explains why Tucson remains the creative home of Arizona Theatre Company, even as productions also travel to the Tempe Center for the Arts.

🏛️ Inside the Historic Temple of Music and Art
The conversation explores ATC’s iconic downtown Tucson venue, from its historic beauty to its Broadway-sized stage and professional production capabilities.

🧛 Behind the Scenes of Dracula
Matt shares what makes ATC’s current production of Dracula so much fun, including its serious comic performances, talented cast, and nationally recognized creative team.

🎬 From Broadway to Southern Arizona
Listeners hear how Matt’s career took him from Broadway, national tours, and major venues to Tucson, where he now helps shape ATC’s artistic future.

🚋 A One-of-a-Kind Two-City Theater Model
ATC produces shows in Tucson and then brings them to Tempe, creating a unique statewide theater model that connects Southern Arizona with the Phoenix metro area.

🎟️ How Theater Seasons Are Chosen
Matt gives a behind-the-scenes look at the challenge of selecting a season that appeals to subscribers, new audiences, students, and theater lovers across Arizona.

📚 The Power of Arts Education
The episode highlights ATC’s commitment to student outreach and the role live theater can play in helping young people build empathy, expression, and emotional understanding.

🌟 Previewing the Upcoming Season
Matt offers a look ahead at ATC’s next season, including Proof, Little Shop of Horrors, The Play That Goes Wrong, Gem of the Ocean, and Killing Kit.

❤️ Celebrating Tucson’s Cultural Core
More than a theater conversation, this episode is a reminder that world-class art is being created right in downtown Tucson.

Arizona Theatre Company has a statewide name, a national reputation, and a deeply Tucson heart.

In this episode of Life Along the Streetcar, Tom Heath sits down with Matt August, the Kasser Family Artistic Director of Arizona Theatre Company, for a conversation about theater, Tucson culture, creative leadership, and the work it takes to bring nationally recognized productions to Arizona audiences.

From the beginning of the conversation, one point becomes clear: Arizona Theatre Company is not simply a touring stop or a Phoenix institution that occasionally visits Tucson. Tucson is ATC’s home. Its productions are built here, shaped here, and launched from one of downtown Tucson’s most treasured cultural landmarks, the historic Temple of Music and Art.

For anyone who loves live performance, local arts, downtown Tucson, or the behind-the-scenes world of professional theater, this episode offers a rare look inside one of Arizona’s most important cultural institutions.

From Broadway to Tucson: Matt August’s Journey to Arizona Theatre Company

Matt August brings a remarkable national résumé to his role at Arizona Theatre Company. His career has included work on Broadway, major national stages, touring productions, and internationally recognized theater projects. In the episode, he reflects on the mentors, opportunities, and creative collaborations that helped shape his path.

One of the major highlights of his career was directing Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, a production that became a Broadway success and went on to tour the country. Matt shares how that experience, along with years of freelance directing and artistic leadership, eventually connected him to Arizona Theatre Company.

His relationship with ATC began years before he became artistic director. After bringing work to Tucson under former artistic director David Ira Goldstein, Matt entered a longer conversation about one day helping lead the organization. The timing did not work the first time. It did not work the second time. But eventually, in 2022, the opportunity aligned.

Now, as ATC’s artistic director, Matt describes the work as both an honor and a responsibility: inheriting a major cultural institution and stewarding it into the future.

Why Tucson Is the Home of Arizona Theatre Company

Although Arizona Theatre Company serves audiences in both Tucson and the Phoenix/Tempe area, Matt is clear that Tucson remains the company’s home. ATC builds its shows in Tucson with a full-time local staff, while also bringing in artists, designers, actors, directors, and creative professionals from across the country.

That model matters. It means that Tucson is not simply receiving finished productions from somewhere else. Instead, downtown Tucson is where the creative process begins.

ATC is also Arizona’s official state theater and the only fully professional LORT theater in the state. Matt explains that LORT stands for the League of Resident Theatres, a national organization representing fully professional producing theaters. In practical terms, that means ATC is operating at a professional union level, with full-time theater artists and crews creating productions as their primary work.

For Tucson, that is significant. It means that Broadway-caliber theater is being developed and staged right in the urban core.

The Temple of Music and Art: A Historic Stage in the Heart of Downtown

A major part of the conversation centers on the Temple of Music and Art, ATC’s historic Tucson home on Scott Avenue.

Tom describes the building as one of those rare places where even standing in line becomes part of the experience. The architecture, courtyard, fountain, lounge, and surrounding downtown streetscape all contribute to the feeling that attending a show at ATC is more than simply watching a performance. It is a cultural night out in one of Tucson’s most beautiful settings.

Matt explains that while the Temple of Music and Art is historic, it remains a highly capable performance space. The stage includes the professional features needed for major productions, including an orchestra pit, fly galleries, and a Broadway-sized footprint. That last detail is especially important because ATC’s productions move between Tucson and Tempe, requiring a stage design that can transfer between cities.

The result is a blend of Tucson history and professional theater infrastructure: an old-school, beautiful, character-rich venue that can still support ambitious modern productions.

Behind the Scenes of Dracula

The episode also gives listeners a closer look at ATC’s current production of Dracula, described by Matt as a “wondrous” comedy with a talented cast and an impressive creative team.

This version of Dracula was written and directed by Gordon Greenberg, a nationally recognized theater director whose work has appeared on major stages across the country and abroad. Matt emphasizes the value of having the original creative voice behind the production directly involved in bringing the show to life for Arizona audiences.

The cast includes experienced comic performers, including Paul Vogt, known for MADtv and Broadway’s Hairspray, as well as Christopher Stevens as Dracula. Matt describes Stevens as a classically trained actor whose serious approach to the role makes the comedy even funnier.

That becomes one of the most interesting theater insights in the conversation. The humor in Dracula does not come from actors playing everything like a joke. Instead, the characters treat their strange, ridiculous, supernatural world with complete seriousness. That tension — serious performance inside a silly universe — is what makes the comedy work.

A Unique Two-City Theater Model Connecting Tucson and Tempe

Arizona Theatre Company operates in a way that makes it unique among professional regional theaters. Matt explains that ATC is the only professional LORT regional theater operating in two cities.

Productions are created in Tucson and then travel to the Tempe Center for the Arts, where ATC now serves as the home company. This gives the organization a statewide reach while still keeping Tucson as the creative center.

That two-city model also creates artistic and logistical challenges. Productions must be designed to work in both spaces. Programming has to connect with audiences in both Southern Arizona and the Phoenix metro area. And the season must be built with enough range to serve different communities, tastes, and expectations.

For Matt, that challenge is also part of ATC’s mission: producing theater that serves all Arizonans.

How ATC Chooses a Season

One of the strongest parts of the episode is Matt’s explanation of how Arizona Theatre Company plans its season.

He describes season planning as one of the most stressful parts of his job because every production has to matter. With a limited number of mainstage shows, each selection needs to earn its place. A season cannot be built around only one type of audience or one type of story.

The goal is balance. ATC needs shows that appeal to subscribers, attract new audiences, speak to the cultural moment, support student outreach, and create meaningful theatrical experiences. Some shows may be familiar crowd-pleasers. Others may challenge audiences or introduce them to something new. But across the full season, the company wants everyone to find something that speaks to them.

Matt also talks about the importance of choosing productions that can be shared with students. Theater, he explains, helps young people understand emotion, expression, maturity, and human experience in ways that few other art forms can. That educational mission remains central to ATC’s broader cultural role.

A Preview of the Upcoming Arizona Theatre Company Season

The episode closes with an exciting preview of ATC’s upcoming season, which Matt describes as a lineup filled with strong stories, major artists, comedy, music, drama, and new theatrical energy.

The season begins with Proof, the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning play about genius, love, family, and a young woman finding the courage to claim her own brilliance. The production will also bring former ATC Artistic Director David Ira Goldstein back to direct, creating a meaningful connection between ATC’s past and present.

Next comes Little Shop of Horrors, the beloved musical about ambition, temptation, and a strange plant that turns a modest flower shop into something much more dangerous. Matt describes it as one of the most popular musicals in the American theater canon, filled with songs audiences know and love.

The season continues with The Play That Goes Wrong, a wildly popular comedy about a theater company attempting to stage a murder mystery while everything collapses around them. Sets fall apart, actors miss lines, backstage chaos spills forward, and the disaster becomes the entertainment.

ATC will also present August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, the first play in Wilson’s ten-play American Century Cycle. Matt notes that the production will be led by Alicia Turner Sonnenberg, one of the country’s most in-demand directors and a major interpreter of Wilson’s work.

The season will conclude with Killing Kit, a new play that turns Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe into characters in a murder mystery. Matt describes it as funny, smart, filled with Shakespearean Easter eggs, and potentially the beginning of a new kind of theatrical mystery genre.

Together, the season reflects ATC’s larger mission: to offer something for everyone while continuing to produce ambitious, professional theater in Arizona.

Broadway-Quality Theater in Tucson’s Urban Core

By the end of the conversation, the episode becomes about more than one production or one season. It becomes a reminder of what Tucson already has.

Arizona Theatre Company is producing theater downtown that Matt describes as Broadway quality — work that is strong enough to move to other cities, other stages, and even New York. But the work begins here, in Tucson, inside a historic theater that has helped shape the city’s cultural identity for generations.

For Tom and Matt, that is the heart of the story. ATC is not just an arts organization. It is part of the social, cultural, and economic life of the urban core. It brings artists to Tucson, gives audiences access to nationally significant theater, supports students, activates downtown, and reminds the community that major creative work can happen here.

This episode is a celebration of live theater, but it is also a celebration of Tucson’s role as a place where serious art, ambitious storytelling, and community identity continue to meet.

Listen to the Episode

Listen to this episode of Life Along the Streetcar to hear Tom Heath’s full conversation with Matt August of Arizona Theatre Company.

You’ll learn how ATC builds professional productions in Tucson, why the Temple of Music and Art remains such an important cultural venue, what makes the company’s two-city model unique, and what audiences can look forward to in the upcoming season.

For tickets and information, visit Arizona Theatre Company.

Life Along the Streetcar airs every Sunday on Downtown Radio 99.1 FM and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Tom Heath
Welcome back to another episode of Life Along the Streetcar, where we cover the social, cultural and economic impacts happening within the urban core, which we define as the University of Arizona on the east and a mountain on the West. We cover all kinds of topics, and today I’m excited because we’ve got a really well-traveled guest on our show today, Matt Auguste, who I’ll have to his own introduction because I just found out his title as like, like three sentences long.

But he’s with the Arizona Theater Company, and we are towards the end of one of their fabulous performances. But a lot to look forward to next season. So Matt, thanks. Welcome. Well thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. All right. Let’s get this out of the way. The title hit me with the title.

Mat August
My title is The Caster Family. Artistic director of Arizona Theater Company and Arizona Theater Company is Arizona’s official state theater.

Tom Heath
Yeah, I think that’s important to note because the whenever there’s a performances in Tucson, in the Phoenix area, everyone always thinks it’s from Phoenix and it trickles down here. But that is not the case. Pushing pushing up that way.

Mat August
That’s right. Tucson is very much the home has been and will be the home of of Arizona Theater Company.

Tom Heath
Well, I’ve got to talk before we get into the theater and Dracula, which I’ve heard wonderful things about. I need to talk about you because I’m reading through your bio. I don’t do a lot of research for the show. Honestly, I like there are a lot of candid conversations, which also means I’m kind of lazy. But you have been everywhere.

You’ve done a lot. You’ve done. I mean, you’ve been. It’s hard to find a place. You haven’t had a performance, you know, Broadway, Grand Ole Opry, Madison Square Garden. He’s got stuff in Europe like, tell me about that. But then how does that get you here to Tucson?

Mat August
Oh, well, I’ll tell you, I’ve been very fortunate. Um, I have definitely stood on the shoulders of some wonderful mentors who have been some of the country’s best artistic directors of other theaters, other major theaters and other major cities. Um, and, uh, that has led me to a wonderful freelance career that I’ve had.

Um, you know, it started off in New York, as most careers do, where I was able to. I was fortunate enough to work on Broadway for a while, both as an associate director and then as a director of my own show, which was the holiday musical of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And that has now been, you know, we were two years on Broadway with that.

And then it’s been touring the country and it’s played internationally.

Tom Heath
That was the Lord’s, didn’t it?

Mat August
20 years, uh, just audience awards. It didn’t win any official awards on Broadway because we kind of came out of nowhere and we, uh, we didn’t really have much of a, of a push behind us, but we were the number one selling show on Broadway.

Tom Heath
That’s what I write.

Mat August
For four weeks and knocking wicked off of their 100 week perch.

Tom Heath
I’ve heard of wicked.

Mat August
Yeah, yeah, we we topped wicked at the box office for four weeks, um, in the, in the winter of 2006. And that brought us back for the next year. And then after that, um, you know, I worked, uh, just freelancing around the country, and then I moved to LA and was in LA for a while and raised some kids there. Um, And in 20 1516 season.

In the 20 1516 season, out here, a show that I had started at a small theater in Los Angeles, and then it got brought into the Geffen Theater in in Los Angeles, which is a a Lord B theater, which is similarly sized scale to Arizona Theater Company, and it’s one of their major theaters in Los Angeles. We did it.

We did it there. And then the former artistic director here, David IRA Goldstein, came to see it, and he invited us to do it at Arizona Theater Company. Um, and, uh, that started my journey with, with ATC. Uh, and David invited me to do the very next show which the theater was producing, and it was, um, the, the, the regional premiere of King Charles the Third.

And we did that. And, uh, you know, there was some there was some turmoil that summer about whether the theater was going to make it or not. And I’ll never forget that. Uh, um, Kathy Allen in her review, said this production is exactly why Arizona needs to support Arizona theater companies because we have theater of this quality happening downtown Tucson and it’s a treasure.

So she was very supportive, and at that point I started talking. I started entering the conversation about being David’s successor. And it took three times to to actually make sure that the job worked out and the timing was right. I didn’t get it the first time I got asked the second time, and that was not right for me because of personal reasons, what was going on with the family.

And then it came around again in 2000 at the end of 22. And and thankfully it worked out. And I have loved being here, I love Tucson, I love the two city model. We’re the only professional Lort regional theater that that operates in two cities, and there’s only about 75 plus

Mat August
official Lort theaters around the country, and we’re the only one that operates in two cities. But we build all of our shows here in Tucson with a local staff of of full time staff of 74 folks. We bring in over 100 artists every season from out of town and or locally to help put on a place to design them, to direct them, choreograph them, to be the actors in the company.

And we really do recruit from all around the country. So we are bringing the best of the best to Arizona. And, and, and our plays are just heavy hitting plays. And as you said, we’ve got a wonderful comedy on stage right now with Dracula. And, um, and it’s doing fantastic. And the audiences are really loving it.

So the programing seems to be resonating with with everybody in town.

Tom Heath
So use the phrase a couple times. Lort theaters.

Mat August
Yeah. Lort stands for League of Resident Theaters. And so that is the official sort of umbrella organization of all of the fully professional producing organizations, and we are the only one of those in in Arizona, which means that we are fully unionized, all of our staff and our crew and our and and our our artists who come in are all part of the collectively bargain contracts with all of their unions.

Their everybody is fully professional, which means that they do this as their full time job, not as a not as a sort of a part time hobby. Um, and we we as I said, we produce our shows. So we are building all of the shows here in town with our staff, with our artists and, and putting them up on stage.

Tom Heath
Well, let’s talk about the stage for the moment, because you’re in the iconic temple of music and art. That’s a hundred year old building and it’s simply beautiful. But I would I would imagine that that sort of presents some challenges, maybe in production. Or does it have everything you need?

Mat August
Well, it’s an exquisite theater and it’s, you know, it’s very much of an old school theater. And, um, you know, it was built off of the blueprints for the Pasadena Playhouse, which is the state theater of California. Um, it’s a historic building. So we there are things that we can’t do to it, but it’s very much ours to steward inside the building.

Um, the stage itself is state of the art. It’s got everything that that that one really needs. Um, there’s a there’s an orchestra pit. There are fly galleries for scenery to, um, to be flown and tracked in and out. Uh, it’s got a Broadway sized footprint. So if we wanted to move the shows to other theaters, you know, and that’s a that’s obviously a concern as we move the shows up to the the Phoenix Tempe area, we need to make sure that we have a stage that is comparable in size up there, which fortunately we do and have had.

Um, but um, it’s, it’s it’s a comfortable theater. It’s got comfortable seating. We’ve got a lounge where audiences can come in and hang out beforehand and get a drink. There’s a beautiful patio, um, and courtyard with a with a historic fountain in there. Uh, and we’ve been around for 58 seasons. This is our 58th season.

Not all of them have been at the at the Temple of Music in Art, but, um, but we hope to be around for another 58.

Tom Heath
Yeah. And I will say it’s one of those few, one of those few theaters where you when you’re like, maybe standing in line to get your pick up your tickets from the box office or something like, you enjoy it because it’s just such a beautiful surrounding. You know, it’s like, I just want to be here. It doesn’t matter, but I’m in a line or waiting for a for a performance.

This is a beautiful, beautiful setting. And it’s on one of my favorite streets in Tucson with Scott, with all the. It’s just fun to walk up and down Scott Avenue and my personal humble opinion. Um, so, uh, let’s talk a little bit about Dracula, because that is wrapping up here, um, at the end of May and then, well, here in Tucson, but it will travel then from here up to the, the Tempe, um, um, area.

Correct?

Mat August
Yeah, yeah. We are now also the home company at the Tempe Center for the Arts. Um, so even though we we produce all of our shows down here, we still are inside of a building there that. That allows us to be the home company. Um, but yeah, Dracula is it’s it’s really a wondrous show. We have the author who came in and directed the show, Gordon Greenberg, who is one of, you know, the hottest directors in the country right now.

He’s he just directed that Baker’s wife, uh, Stephen Sondheim, the Baker’s wife, uh, Off-Broadway. That is now, uh, rumored to be, you know, moving on to the main stem. Uh, he he directed the Huey Lewis musical on Broadway. He can do that. And he’s directed Noises Off all around the country. It’s doing its.

They’re going to get another run at it again this summer. Um, he regularly directs at the Old Globe. He directs on the West End. I mean, he’s really a very special kind of director. Um, and he came in and put the put the show up, uh, himself, his version of it. Uh, so we have the, you know, the original voice and the original artist, the primary artist, as we like to say, uh, come in and do it.

And it’s starring just a cast of wonderful, wonderful comics. Um, you know, um, anchored by Paul Vogt, uh, who, uh, who’s on MADtv, of course, and has, you know, made a career playing editor to Turnbull all around the country. Uh, and on Broadway in Hairspray. Um, and we’ve got Christopher Stevens playing Dracula, who is just incredible to watch.

He’s a wonderfully classically trained actor who looks like the statue of David. So he’s it’s a really a very mesmerizing Dracula to watch.

Tom Heath
Does he normally do comedy?

Mat August
Um, you know, he. If he doesn’t, he should.

Tom Heath
It’s just interesting because I’ve seen a lot of times that, you know, when you were classically trained, you have this idea that they’re just very straight laced. But then when they get into the comedy role, they can just perform at such a high level.

Mat August
Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that makes this show works really so well, I mean, the show is very silly and it’s very funny, but the actors are taking it very seriously, and every, every moment of their performance is deadly serious for them. You know, it’s a weird universe, and that’s what makes it funny, is that they are not playing as if they’re in a comedy.

They’re playing as if they’re in a very serious drama that just happens to be super silly.

Tom Heath
Now, I know in the past it’s there, it’s kind of late, and this will be out just before it closes. But can people still go see it in Tucson, or do they have to wait to get up to.

Mat August
We are on sale until we close Saturday night. So there’s a performance. There’s two performances tomorrow.

Tom Heath
It’ll be the 16th.

Mat August
The Saturday the 16th. So there’s two performances on Thursday. There’s one performance Friday night, and there’s two performances on Saturday at 2:00 and a 730 matinee. Okay. And that’s generally our schedule. We usually have 2:00 matinees throughout the week, 2 or 3 throughout the week, and then a 730 show at night, usually Tuesday through through Sunday.

Tom Heath
And tickets still are available.

Mat August
Tickets are still available.

Tom Heath
Yeah. And then if for some reason they can’t make it this weekend, how long before it starts? The next. The next version. Up north.

Mat August
We open in Tempe on the 23rd of May. And just a week. Yeah. Yeah, we. It takes us a week to jump the show, and then it’ll close on June 6th. And for anybody out there who might be, uh, price sensitive, uh, for, you know, for ticket prices, we have all kinds of discounts. We’ve got a community night discount. We’ve got a pride night discount.

We’ve got discounts for, uh, for first responders. We’ve got discounts for teachers, we’ve got discounts for students. Uh, so and we’ve got the Balcony Club, which are, which are very cheap seats to sit up in the balcony for any, for all performances. And we’ve got day of rush tickets for every performance as well.

So there’s always an opportunity for folks to come to see the shows depending on whatever their budget is.

Tom Heath
And where do we get information on that?

Mat August
Go to ATC. Org. Okay. Uh, which is our website. Um, and you can get all of the information that, that, that we have. I would also love to mention that we have a fundraising drive going on right now.

Tom Heath
The push to do.

Mat August
Your the arts. That’s right. We need with government support. Sort of just sort of just drying up into nothing. We have some really wonderful local philanthropists that have stepped up, stepped into that void and are helping us fill it. And one is the Connie Hillman Family Foundation, which has a two for one challenge grant going on with us right now.

So for every $2 that are donated, they will donate $1 back to us. And you can get more information about that at 88.

Tom Heath
Okay. So then with Dracula, we wrap up this this session, this season of the theater. But then how long before the next performance here in Tucson, when is the next season start?

Mat August
So we will we will go dark for the summer as we as we plan the next season. And we’re coming in next season with proof, which will open right at the beginning of October. I think October 1st is the is the opening is the opening night for that or the first performance for that, and that’s going to be a really special one.

Not only is Proof on Broadway right now and it’s seeing a resurgence. I mean, it’s a wonderful, wonderful play in its own right, but next season we have loaded with incredible artists coming in to do these shows. And the artist that is coming in to direct that show, proof is none other than David IRA Goldstein, Arizona Theater Company’s former artistic director.

The guy who brought me in for the first time. So we’re bringing him back to do that. He’s got an incredible, you know, just MVP team of creatives around him. And we’re actually flying to LA, uh, next week to, uh, to to go audition the actors.

Tom Heath
Okay. That was going to be my next question is how at what point. So you’ve got the season laid out and then we can check out the whole schedule on ATC. Proof comes out in October. So at what point like walk me through this process. How do you first of all, how do you decide that that proof is going to be one of the performances because you have a limited time and space.

Mat August
Yeah. Season planning is is probably the most stressful part of my job because we’re right now we’re producing five shows on the main stage. It used to be that we were producing. You know, a handful more than that. But with the the way that, um, you know, the budget cuts have, have gone down in the last. You know, ten years really, we’ve just had to do fewer and fewer performances or productions.

But we’re down to five right now. And for my view is each one of those has to be a slam dunk. You know, we’ve got to get we’ve got to get shows that are appealing to the audiences that they’re that the audiences want to see. We need shows that are meaningful for where we are in the moment. Culturally. We need shows that are going to be inspiring, and we need shows that we’re going to be able to bring students to, that are going to inspire them and turn them into theater lovers and teach them the things that only theater can really teach.

You know, there have been study after study done that. That shows that when students when kids come to see theater. They express themselves better. They have a better understanding of the emotion of their emotional landscapes. They’re able to identify emotions better, and they just become more mature a little bit faster.

Um, so it’s important for us to be able to, to, to program such that we can we have shows that are of mature with mature themes, but are not so mature that that they can’t resonate to, you know, high school and middle school students. Um, now that said, um, the the most important thing is that we’ve got shows that are going to resonate with with our both our subscribers and our season tickets.

And it’s a little tricky because the Tucson audience is a little different than the Phoenix audience. So we’ve got to kind of thread those needles, and we’ve got a program for shows that we think will work in both cities, and next year, I think we’ve got a great lineup. We’re going to start with this play Proof, which is a Tony winning play.

It’s a Pulitzer Prize winning play. I mean, it’s just a classic. And it’s a play about a young woman who really comes into her own, discovers love, and and allows her own genius to actually come out. And she she she becomes courageous enough to actually let people know exactly how smart she is. So it’s really about this, you know, caterpillar of a woman evolving into a butterfly.

And the next show after that in our holiday slide, which will play here in December, is Little Shop of Horrors, which is just an incredibly popular musical about two down and out, you know,

Mat August
workers on Skid Row who discover a quick get rich quick scheme and it just goes out of hand. And so there’s there’s a moral to be had there. And it’s got some of the greatest songs in the American musical theater canon, songs that everybody knows and everybody loves. So we’re really excited to bring that, uh, to, to to be producing that.

And then after that, we’re going to be doing a wonderfully popular play called The Play That Goes Wrong, which is a story about a theater company that is trying to put on a murder mystery and everything around them is just going going wrong. The scenery is falling apart. Actors are forgetting their lines.

There’s there’s mayhem backstage that they’re trying to control, and it’s just a really hilarious and again, very popular play. And then after that, we’re going to bring back August Wilson’s plays into our lineup. We’re going to be doing the very first play that August, Wilson wrote as part of his ten play The American Century Cycle.

And it’s called The Gem of the ocean. We’ve got an incredible director coming in to do that. Alicia Turner Sonnenberg, who’s one of the most in-demand directors in the country right now and certainly one of the foremost interpreters of August Wilson’s work. So we’re really lucky that we’re going to be getting that one.

And as I said, it’s the first one that kicks off all the rest of his plays. And of course, his play, Joe Turner Come and Gone is is on Broadway right now, and it’s a rare season that doesn’t have an August Wilson season somewhere in it on Broadway. Um, so, um.

Tom Heath
And you’re so you’re you’re covering the whole spectrum. You’ve got serious drama, you’ve got comedy, you’ve got musical. That’s right. I’m sure I’m sure that’s intentional. You’ve got it. You’ve gotta you mentioned subscribers. So you’ve got people that have a variety of interests that can’t always just be funny plays.

Mat August
That’s right, that’s right. We, we, you know, our, our mission statement is to, to, to produce theater and tell stories that serve all Arizonans. And that really does mean everybody. It doesn’t just mean we’re going to cater to one demographic. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to we’re going to pigeonhole ourselves with a certain kind of programing.

It means that we’re going to tell stories that are going to have an appeal. And it’s not that every play is going to appeal to everybody, but there’s going to be something in our season for everybody. And we and we think that there are things in our season that are going to maybe be new for folks that but we know that they’re going to love because they’re just great stories.

And just real quick, we’re going to we’re going to finish the season with a play, a new play called killing Kit, which is where Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are our main characters in the play. And it’s a murder mystery, and it is written by a very, um, edgy and and popular television writer who made a career of kind of disrupting television with shows like Gossip Girl and The O.C., and he was the executive producer on a on the Batman origin story series called Gotham.

And he’s kind of taken Shakespeare and he’s turned him into sort of a procedural investigative reporter, um, detective, to figure out what happened to what actually happened to Christopher Marlowe. And for Shakespeare enthusiasts, it’s just Easter egg after Easter egg. It’s very funny. It’s and it works.

It works really well as its own murder mystery. So we think that we’re going to have a this, that that play is going to be a kickoff to a whole new sort of genre of Are Shakespeare murder mysteries turned into Hercule Poirot a type of character?

Tom Heath
It sounds incredibly exciting. I’m I, I’m always in these interviews. Like we always end up so pressed for time. I think it’ll be nice as we get into the next season. Maybe we’ll have you or someone on to talk about the performances and a little bit more in depth, because I think each one of those is probably going to need a little bit more time to really kind of get us our hands around it, to see what kind of a gem we do have here in Tucson.

Mat August
We’d love to come back, we’d love to come back. And it really is. Um,

Mat August
it really is a gem that we have here, here. You know, we are producing theater downtown. That is Broadway quality. Um, you know, it’s ready to it’s ready to move to other places. It’s ready to move to New York. Uh, and the and Tucson should be immensely proud of what they have here at Arizona Theater Company.

And for me, it was an honor to inherit it. And it’s, uh, it’s a pleasure to steward it forward.

Tom Heath
Matt August, Arizona Theater company. I should say well-traveled. Matt August, uh, with all kinds of, uh. Seriously, go to the Arizona Theater website and look at his resume. You know, it just blew me away. All the things that you’ve been involved with. I appreciate you taking your time here with us today.

Mat August
Thank you. It’s a real pleasure.

Tom Heath
Well, thanks again for your time here. With life along the streetcar. We focus on the social, cultural and economic impacts in the urban core. You can catch us every Sunday on downtown radio 99.1 FM. And then of course, the podcast on our website, Life Along the streetcar.org. We’re also all over social media.

YouTube handles everywhere our life along the streetcar. If you ever have a topic, something you would like us to cover, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Tag us in something on the social media or you can email us contact at Life Along the Streetcar.

Tom Heath
I hope you tune in every Sunday for another episode of Lifelong Streetcar. And until next time. Stay curious. Tucson.